Well, that was fast.

Last Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump shocked even his allies by nominating Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Today, Gaetz withdrew, a day after meeting with senators on Capitol Hill.

“It is clear that my nomination unfairly became a distraction from the critical work of the Trump/Vance transition,” the Florida man wrote on I will I have withdrawn my name from serving as Attorney General. Trump’s DOJ must be in place and ready on Day 1.”

It is very common for at least one presidential candidate to withdraw at some point in the process. What’s unusual is how quickly Gaetz’s nomination fell apart. Eight days isn’t the record, but it’s close. (Recall that White House physician Ronny Jackson’s nomination to head the Department of Veterans Affairs lasted nearly a month before collapsing.) Just two days ago, Trump insisted he had no doubts about the choice of Gaetz.

Listen: What Pete Hegseth’s nomination is about

The reason why Gaetz withdrew is no secret and no surprise. He has been overshadowed for years by accusations of sex trafficking, paying for sex, drug use and sex with an underage girl. It appears that Trump didn’t bother to investigate Gaetz in any serious way before nominating him, but this was all known. The Justice Department investigated Gaetz for years but decided not to file charges in 2023; the House Ethics Committee was still investigating him. Gaetz himself denies all allegations. The fact that Gaetz, like Trump, has a personal vendetta against the Justice Department seemed to be his main evidence for this position.

When Gaetz was nominated, he also resigned from Congress. That froze the House Ethics Committee investigation because he was no longer a member. Speaker Mike Johnson, a Gaetz ally albeit essentially a conservative while Gaetz is a libertine, opposed releasing the committee’s work, and the committee deadlocked in a vote. But Gaetz’s victory was hardly complete. His appointment released a lot of damaging new information, including testimony that he had sex twice with a 17-year-old, although witnesses believed Gaetz did not know she was underage. An attorney for two women said they testified to the House of Representatives that Gaetz paid them for sex. The New York Times published an impossibly detailed chart of payment schedules. Gaetz was joking, and the audience found out; in accepting the scrutiny that comes with a nomination, he has also done some wandering and discovery.

But don’t cry too much for Gaetz, and not just because of his track record as a villain. (He is loathed by House colleagues, and many reports indicate he shared nude videos of lovers on the House floor.) His disgrace has not hindered his rise so far, and he is believed to have plans to run for office running for governor of Florida when Ron DeSantis’ term expires.

The question is what this defeat means for the rest of Trump’s list of outsized nominees. The president-elect likes to take a chance, even if he sometimes loses, but as I argued last week, the presence of so many unqualified choices could perversely make it easier for some of them to get through. You can’t reject them all, right?

Read: The perverse logic of Trump’s nomination circus

Gaetz’s quick departure shows that Senate Republicans are unwilling to accept literally anyone Trump throws their way, and the fact that they were able to send that message so quickly indicates the depth of their reservations. If the rejection is a sign of weakness for Trump, it is also a sign of his newly elected vice president, Senator JD Vance. Vance was given the tough job yesterday of guiding Gaetz around Senate offices to rally support, which clearly didn’t go well.

Gaetz’s failure doesn’t mean senators will reject other choices, but with Gaetz out of the way, Pete Hegseth’s troubled nomination to lead the Pentagon could gain more attention. A police report on a 2017 sexual assault allegation against Hegseth was released today, and it’s stomach-churning to read. Alternatively, Gaetz could end up looking like a sacrificial choice to save the others, or a stalking horse for Trump to appoint someone else to DOJ. It seems unlikely that Trump meant either – he doesn’t normally play to lose – but that could be the effect.

Before choosing Gaetz, Trump reportedly concluded that other candidates simply didn’t have what he was looking for in an attorney general. The New York Times. Now he’ll have to go back to his lists and pick someone who has one thing Gaetz conspicuously lacked: the ability to get confirmed.